PC Handout – J. Apalatea

4/17/09 Noon-1:20 Room 4610

Workshop #4224, Creating Movies

Making a video of yourself for your students can give a wonderful personal touch to your online/hybrid/on-site class. None of us are professional models, actors or videographers. So, just getting over the fear of recording and seeing yourself on a video is at least one goal I hope we can all accomplish today.

Feel free to take a look at the work I did and the notes I left for myself while working on my sabbatical project: http://www.miracosta.edu/home/japalatea/

Before you sit down and start talking to the camera, there are a few things you probably should do first:

1.  Think about these before writing your script

  1. Purpose of movie?
  2. Length of movie?
  3. How reusable do you want this movie to be? (Create multiple movies?)
  4. Who is your audience? (Age, learning style, familiarity with technology, etc.)
  5. Other?

2.  Write a script (Word, Notepad, etc.)

  1. What exactly do you want your audience to know?
  2. How are you going to keep your audience’s attention?
  3. Type script in font easy for you to read (both in print and on screen)
  4. Type script at least double spaced.
  5. Type script so there are line breaks at natural stopping points and limit each line to no more than approximately 45 characters (This will make your life much easier later.)
  6. Other?
  7. Maybe you don’t want or need a script… (I’m not that daring!)

3.  Practice your script (no camera turned on)

  1. As you practice, you will probably make changes to your script.
  2. Are you going to be using any props in your movie? If so, practice with them.
  3. Speak more slowly than you normally would.
  4. Practice smiling while talking.
  5. Time yourself and see about how long it takes for you to read through your script.
  6. Is your script a good length? Sometimes students get bored if they have to listen for more than 2-3 minutes on one video. So, if you have a script longer than 2-3 minutes, consider cutting out some material OR consider breaking your script into smaller scripts and having multiple movies.
  7. Practice until you are either comfortable not using the script at all, or until you have memorized enough that you don’t need to read every word directly from the script.
  8. Other?

Now, you’re ready to get your recording program started. Find a computer that has a camera on it. You may have to move your chair around or share a computer.

4.  Open Windows Movie Maker

  1. Start>Programs>Windows Movie Maker (It’s probably close to the end of the list of programs)

5.  Poke around in Movie Maker to get comfortable with its look and feel and to see what some of your options are.

  1. Menu on left-hand side
  2. Storyboard at bottom
  3. Menu along top

Now, you’re ready to get your camera/mic started.

6.  When you’ve poked around enough, click on ‘Capture from video device’ (it’s on the left under ‘Capture Video’.)

7.  The Video Capture Wizard will open

  1. On the Video Capture Device screen, in the Available devices window, you should see a camera icon (most likely titled USB Video Device or Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 or something like that)
  1. On the Video Capture Device screen, in the Audio device pull-down menu, you can choose one of two microphones (ignore the 3rd choice)
  2. If you want to use the mic on the headset (if you want to wear the headset while recording), choose ‘Logitech USB Headset’.
  3. If you want to use the mic on the camera (if you don’t want to wear the headset while recording), choose ‘USB Audio Device’ also called ‘Logitech Mic (Pro 9000)’ on some computers.
  4. If you get an error message like: “A problem was encountered when trying to … please try again”. Click on ‘OK’, then click on ‘Capture from video device’ and select your mic again. It should work this time.
  5. Once you have chosen the mic successfully, click on ‘Next’ (at the bottom).
  1. On the Capture Video screen
  2. Type in the name of the first practice video you will shoot.
  1. Leave the ‘Choose a Place to Save Your Captured Video’ set to ‘My Videos’.
    This saves all of your videos to the hard drive on the computer where you are currently working
    e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\4610teacher\My Documents\My Videos C:\Documents and Settings\4610user13\My Documents\My Videos
  2. Click on ‘Next’ (at the bottom).
  1. On the next Capture Video screen
  2. Choose the level of quality of your video.
    Please select “Best quality for playback on my computer”. This will most likely create a very large file, but we can compress it later. It’s better to have a higher quality large file that you can make smaller, than to have a poor quality small file you wish were higher quality.

You should be able to see yourself through the camera in the preview window now.

8.  Get in the window what you want to see and get distractions minimized

  1. Note: Some webcams have the ability to zoom so you can get a tighter/wider shot without having to move your body or chair. These webcams don’t. Thus, you may have to move you chair or face closer to or further away from the camera in order to get the shot you want.
  2. Try to make camera level with your eyes (no one wants to look up your nose or just see the top of your head),
  3. Get a clean background (remove distracting items like posters, pictures, furniture, etc.)
  4. Add lighting if needed (e.g. open curtains, turn on room lights, set desk lamp on desk in front of you, etc.)
  5. Close windows and doors in room
  6. Send kids outside
  7. Remove cats/dogs/toys or other possible noise creators out of the room
  8. Use the bathroom if you haven’t recently
  9. Get comfortable in your seat
  10. Other?

Now you’re ready to start talking to your camera and recording a few trials until you get a video you like.

9.  Here are a few helpful hints for your recording

  1. Don’t start talking immediately – just smile for a few seconds, then start talking (If smiling defeats the purpose of your movie, then scowl or have no expression at the beginning). We’ll edit this part later.
  2. Leave a little bit of you smiling at the end (or scowling, or no expression). We’ll edit this part later.
  3. Speak slowly and as naturally as possible.
  4. The more you move, the more distracting it is to your audience (unless it’s essential to your video)
  5. Other?

10.  If you know what you’re going to say by heart and don’t feel as though you might want the script at hand, go ahead and start recording.

11.  If you are not comfortable talking without the script in front of you (even if you never actually look at the script), try the following:

  1. Open your script
  2. Set the script’s window to be the full width of the screen, but tall enough to only show two lines of text at a time.
  3. Move the window all the way to the top of the screen.
  4. Move the Movie Maker Window to the full width of the screen, but short enough that it does not overlap your script.
  5. As you are talking while recording your video, use the scrolling mouse to keep your script in time with the words you are saying.
  6. Now, if you need to look at your script while you’re talking, you won’t have to move your eyes too far away from the camera.

12.  When you are ready and have the shot you want in the preview window, smile, then Click on ‘Start Capture’

  1. Click on your script
  2. Smile for at least 3 seconds
  3. Start talking (slowly, with a cheery voice – unless that defeats the purpose of your video)
  4. Scroll the mouse to keep your place in the script
  5. If you make a mistake, just stop, smile, scroll your script back to either the beginning or to the last good stopping point, then start again. (alternately, you could stop capturing then start again from #6)
  6. When you are done talking, keep smiling for at least 3 seconds.
  7. Click on the ‘Stop Capture’ button in Movie Maker to stop recording.
  8. Click on finish

Now, let’s see what we’ve created (and improve upon it).

13.  You should now see your video in the ‘Collection’ area in Movie Maker. Let’s watch it.

  1. Double click on it and you can watch it
  2. It will playback in the headphones, so you may need to put on the headphones to hear your movie.
  3. Notice two sets of numbers in a black stripe under where your video is playing. The first number is where (what time) you are in the video. The second number is the length of the video.
  4. If you cannot hear any audio, you may need to adjust the microphone input level when you do your next recording (you do this in the Video Capture Wizard when you select which mic you want to use).
  5. If the microphone input level is not at zero (or is not really low), you may just need to speak up on your next recording.

14.  What can you do to improve upon your first movie?

  1. Pace of speech
  2. Eye contact with camera
  3. Voice level
  4. Length of movie
  5. More practice of script
  6. Looking more at ease (even if you don’t feel at ease)
  7. Strange things about you that you never noticed before (you constantly say, ‘Um’, you constantly swallow hard, you’re constantly blinking, like me, something was hanging out of your nose, etc.). Other?

15.  Record a second attempt and possibly more until you are happy with what you got (you can record another video by again clicking on the link titled ‘Capture from video device’ – or if you want to get fancy you can hit Ctrl+r on the keyboard – or from the pull-down ‘file’ menu you can choose ‘capture video’)

  1. Note: Nobody is expecting a professional-level video. If your video doesn’t have egregious errors/annoying things or something you find to be professionally/personally embarrassing – it’s good enough.

16.  Recall from 7c, your videos are saved to the hard drive on the computer where you are currently working e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\4610user13\My Documents\My Videos

17.  When you record further videos, you won’t see the older ones in the Collection area. However, you can easily past videos from the pull-down menu right above the Collection area.

Once you have a second, or third, or nth attempt that you’re happy with, it’s time to edit the video.

18.  Click on and drag the video from the Collections area down to one of the blank white rectangles at the bottom of the screen.

19.  Click on the words ‘Show Timeline’ (above your newly moved video)

20.  Click on the magnifying glasses to zoom in or out on your timeline (if you would like to try to fit your long video so you don’t have to scroll right to see your whole timeline or so that it’s easier to trim a short video).

21.  Put on the headphones so you can hear your video.

22.  Play around with both sets of playback controllers. One set is in the timeline area. The other set is under the video player. The controls under the video have nice rewind and fast forward buttons.

23.  Now, let’s cut you video at the beginning and at the end so there is approximately 3 seconds of you not talking at each end.

24.  Watch your video and make sure you have at least 3 seconds of you looking at the camera, smiling and not talking at both the beginning and the end. If you don’t, you can either reshoot your video or just live with it.

25.  Cut out any more than 3 seconds of you looking at the camera, smiling and not talking at the beginning and at the end.

  1. You do this by pausing the video (I recommend using the controllers under where the video plays) where you want it cut.
  2. Alternately, you can pause when you start talking, use the time codes to see that time, and then use the rewind button to go back 3 seconds at the beginning to where you need to cut (Use the fast forward button to go ahead 3 seconds at the end).
  3. Once you are paused where you want to cut, under the pull-down ‘Clip’ choose ‘Split’. This will split your clip into two (the stuff you don’t want and the stuff you do want). If you accidentally split in the wrong spot, you can combine the two clips and try again.
  4. Once you are sure you have cut the clips where you want, you can delete the extraneous parts there were at the beginning and the end of your video. Delete the extraneous parts by right-clicking on them and choosing ‘delete’.

26.  If you want to get fancy, go to the ‘Edit Movie’ area and you can add titles (aka captions), video effects, ending credits, etc.

  1. To add a title at the beginning, choose Edit Movie > Make Titles or Credits > Title at the Beginning
  2. To add a title at the beginning, choose Edit Movie > Make Titles or Credits > Credits at the End
  3. To add captions (these can NOT be turned off, but you can give you students a choice of two movies to watch, one with and one without captions), choose Edit Movie > Make Titles or Credits > Title on the Selected Clip
  4. You can change the default font size, color, etc to make your captions what you want.
  5. The easiest way to add captions may be to cut and paste from your script and worry about duration of the caption at the end.
  6. You can change the duration of each caption by lengthening or shortening the associated rectangle in the Time Overlay.
  7. You can also overlay the caption rectangles.
  8. Once you are done adding caption, titles and/or credits, you should save your movie Windows Movie Maker chose File>Save Movie File> select 'This Computer' and click on 'Next'.
    Name it, and then choose Best Quality for Playback on this Computer.

Depending on your file size, you may or may not have a movie that students can watch easily from their home computers. You may need to make your movie smaller. You can do this in Movie Maker.